The AdvertiserNovember 16, 1996The life, continuing in such ways to the present,is not
less newsworthy now than then!

The Song of Solomon and

the 21st Century Sense of
Man

The Exquisite
Grace and Meek Magnificenceof His HolinessFilled with Beauty, Goodness and Illimitable Truth

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE THE BEAUTY OF HIS
HOLINESS

Last time, we
found great marvels of FAITHFULNESS not divorced from needful discipline, and
RELIABILITY beyond all the puny reciprocities of self-serving trading, GOODNESS
which is infallible in authenticity and has truth as its texture. It was
however chiefly at the national level, in terms of the theocracy that was
Israel and the results of it, the intervention of the Messiah and the overview
of many such things, including the culmination of world history, that we moved.

We must now be quick to
ensure that the individual aspects of these things are not lost, even for one
moment from sight.

It was not least, moreover,
with the desire that the lost might be found that we reasoned; but today it is
important to move primarily in the realm of those already found, and found by One of whom King David said this:

"One
thing I have desired of the LORD,That will I
seek:That I may dwell
in the house of the LORDAll the days of
my life,To behold the
beauty of the LORD,And to enquire
in His temple:For in the time
of troubleHe shall hide me
in His pavilion,In the secret
place of His tabernacleHe shall hide m:He shall set me
high upon a rock"
- Psalm 27:4-5.

That rock has nothing to do
with the puny temporalities of papal power, for as David declares of God in
Psalm 62:2,"He only is my rock and my salvation, He is my defence, I shall not be greatly moved," before going forward in His tower
of strength, the Lord, to affirm vigorously,

"He only
is my rock and my salvation:He is my defence;I shall not be
moved.In God is my
salvation and my glory;The rock of my strength,And my refuge is
in God.Trust in Him at
all times, you people.Pour out your
heart before Him;God is a refuge
for us."

BECAUSE HE IS God,
therefore His servants by faith perceive they shall

a) not be greatly moved, even in tribulation requiring patience,
being sustained,

and

b) not
be moved, because the Rock cannot be rocked, it is impermeable, immovable, unpliable but compliant to all His promises which He has
made, so that in pouring out their hearts to Him at all times, they who trust
in Him do but act rationally. He is there, He loves, His is mercy, goodness
suffuses His whole being, integral, delightful to Him to exercise (Micah 7:19), to us to receive. He is not
sinful; He is not temporary; He is not a beginner in time, but made it. His is
all time, to know the end and to declare it. Thus, "My sheep hear My voice and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give to
them eternal life, and they shall never perish" - in John 10:27ff..

Eternal
life is His (I John 1:1-4) and He gives it. His sheep are so constituted (cf.
Matthew 15:13 by contrast, and I John 3:8, John 5:24); and as such theirs is no
falling away who have so come (John 10:9); nor is there diminution of their
status as sons of the Lord, children of God (I John 3:1, 5:12), because this is
outside the realms of possibility, as if what is expressly of, for, from and
born of God could be other than His (Romans 5:1-11). The thought is horrific, a
clash with all the goodness and grace, the poise and power, the love and
holiness, the beauty and peace of God (cf. Romans 8:29ff.). Elect before the
world, His children are corrected as required (Hebrews 12), but in discipline
they grow, in grace they show the goodness of the glorious God, who alone does
wonders (Psalm 72).

Non-gods like popes,
masquerading as God Almighty on earth and such things as exposed in SMR, these
are what fail, crumble, totter; and in such things, in whichever sect or
philosophy, theology apart from the Bible or political regime, thought process
or spiritual aspiration, intoxication of select and individual existentialism
or corporate States, there is no hope. These are not the rock, but 'new gods,
new arrivals' and alas foolish idols, vanities and futilities, such as we have
seen in the last chapter.

As Moses
put it, speaking in personification of the people of Israel,

"Then
he forsook God who made him,And scornfully esteemed
the Rock of his salvation.They provoked
Him to jealousy with foreign gods;with abomination
they provoked Him to anger.

"They
sacrificed to demons, not to God,To gods they did
not know,To new gods, new
arrivals,That your
fathers did not fear.

"Of the
Rock who begot you, you are unmindful,And have forgotten the
God who fathered you.

"And
when the LORD saw it, He spurned them...And He said I
will hide My face from them,I will see what
their latter end will be,For they are a
perverse generation,Children in whom
is o faith.They have
provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God,They have moved
Me to anger by their foolish idols...

He then, as
He declared, would move them to jealousy with a foolish people: these, since
foolishness is their way, will have power over them.

In His loving zeal, God
esteems no pretentious vacuities, empty symbols, arrogating pride; for the
truth is not changed by words, except they be those of God, or response to Him
and His work, according to truth, in which case truth rules and is in power as
in the matter is befitting. Deception does not remake the universe, but merely
disgraces His products, and if these be men, defaces their hearts, defiles
their spirits and brings decline to their lives. The father
of all that, of liars, it is the devil. His kingdom is wholly other,
rocked by every tide and wind, a thing of insubstantial subsistence, a regime
of nothings, glorified in passing power like a flow of water from a broken
reservoir, cascading down the hills to oppress the villages below.

Perversity of flesh, in the
mind, spirit and body, this is merely a signal for hiding; and when God hides
His face, you get this generation*1. It is
not all like that; but that it is its spirit, its flamboyance of
self-expression.

Thus
in one portrayal of the ten commandments, apparently planned as humorous, the
writer of a newspaper article of a few years ago, implies that people find the
original 10 thing, too bossy (see heading).

What was the view presented ? It seemed to be this… People increasingly now, they
want to think for themselves, express themselves - not in the sense of saying
what they mean, but working out what their meaning is as people, and putting
this into words. It is a matter of expressing their innermost selfishness or
selfhood, or both, abstractly, their diverse inclinations assiduously, their
light and airy desires aptly, their aspirations in some sort of universalisable clothing, so that they might wear their own
garments of 'law', and being lawless, a thing of autonomy and vacuity, vanity
and contrivance, put words to what is not there, and then be it. A thing of
their own construction ?a
verbal unit which opines without power or propriety ?

It is not a graceful
proceeding. If it is humorous, it is starkly and grimly so. Various contrived
replacements for the 10 commandments are voiced in this article. What appears
from these ?As to those whose thoughts
they would interpret by such means, one does one find ?
It is clear that they do not KNOW what they are, so that the very
suggested substitutes for the 10 commandments are as diverse as Summer breezes,
the sea and land breezes of a day, and their day for such ignoble scramblings for the Tower of Self is to be short indeed.

Why is this
? It is partly that all contrivance and congestion of thought in place
of actuality is limited by reality; and partly this, that His coming, who made
them, it is near (Answers to QuestionsCh. 5),
and He whose handbook declares what is right, being the gift of governance and
the anatomising of reality within them, as products
of Him whose Being is glorious and immovable, He is near also. He is not
mocked.

Amidst the thoughts are
these, that perhaps the new lot of rules could be called "the Ten
Tentative Suggestions", followed by the thought that "this is the age
of personal autonomy." The sort of humour
includes such points as these. Could they have, "Speak to people,"
"Smile at people", "Be cordial" and "Be friendly" ?Result ? "Some people
resent being told to smile." Even "Smile at people" is
considered as possibly an 'unfunded mandate'.

Past all the derogatory humour, which is not necessarily meant to be such, but
which has this impact in view of the wild emptiness of it all, there is one
point apparent. There is no substitute for truth, no way for unmeasured man,
measuring himself, to invent either the significance of his measuring
apparatus, or the signification of his units, in terms of truth, reality or
authority (II Corinthians 10:12 cf. John 5:44-47 cf. SMR pp. 292ff.). There is nothing there, and
it is precisely as in the Biblical language, a matter of futilities, vanities
and emptiness.

Statistics, even if they
cohered on popular versions for such things, make neither truth nor wisdom.
What people do might become as 'advanced' as positively seeking for its own
sake, to remake man with bionic and cloning procedures; but why
?for what ? to what ?
with what mandate, understanding, policy, purpose or
issuance of progress, and progress to what ! Does 'is' produce 'ought' or
description, prescription, do self-taught rules make self, or does desire
create actuality ?

It is easy to fiddle with
Dad's Jaguar, and it is another matter entirely to make one; and still further
to remake the road system for it, or to explore space with it, or to find a
reason for doing any of it, or a point for its end.

In all these, and in all
such things, there is no rock, but ruin; no wisdom but pride; no advance but in
arrogance. It is vain. It does not agree, for it has rejected in advance what
there is for agreement, the word of the Maker, the command of the King and the
truth of the God who put it there, put man there, and in His word asks man to
put it there, his assent. In dissent, however, there
is no end, and in gambolling and gambling with
potential greatness, there is no point. Given grace, is it wonder to be disgraceful ? Given strength, is it strong to waste it in
oblivion of the gift!

There is in all this an
ugliness and vanity that is wholly ruinous.

In contrast, there is in
that holiness which is God's alone, but which He shares to those who are His,
imbued with His presence, endued with His mandate, granted grace as His
children, justified by faith, emplaced in The Faith, governed by goodness, led
by truth, redeemed by that same ineffable glory that made them: and this He
does in the lowliness of blood shed, and in the majesty of the King who
subjects Himself for His vassals, that they might be His friends and share His
kingdom in joy.

In this, we begin to
approach something of the beauty of holiness.

It is based in what is
stable as rock; it is surrounded with truth that does not quiver, waver or
change; it flies in the midst of wonder, occupies itself with marvel, and
omnipotence is about it, omniscience its savour,
peace its joy, purity its prerogative and goodness its arteries of
distribution. Thus we look at the experience of Moses, troubled because of the
failure of faith in those who, having been surrounded by miracles like birds in
the evening sky, FEARED to go into the promised land, as many people fear to
enter His own gracious kingdom now, not KNOWING what it will be like, or what
might be expected, despite His word. It is found in Exodus 33:19ff., where in
Moses' mixture of distress and aspiration for grace and inspiration from the
Lord, for his task amidst such depravity in the people as had just occurred, He
is met on supplication, by the Lord who says,

"I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name
of the LORD before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and
I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion... So it shall be, while My glory
passes, by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover
you with My hand while I pass by... "

Later, in Exodus 34:6, He
declares,
"The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering , and
abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty..."

It is the
abundance of goodness, tenderness as in the comforting, encouragement and
inspiration of Moses with character, courage and understanding in the very
midst of conflict brought upon him by his vast task, that you see something of
the effusive glory, and yet the pure holiness of the LORD. It is not for man to
dictate to Him or to direct His thought, to give to Him counsel on those to
whom He will show grace. As it is written in Matthew 11:27, "All things have
been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows
the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, the
one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." Nevertheless, He hears His people (Exodus 33:11-14,
32:31-34). Known to Him are all things before any of them began in the time
frame He created, and though He test, He knows!

Now it is part of the glory
of the Lord, of its beauty, of the "glorious majesty of Your
kingdom" (Psalm
145:12), its splendour and its wonder, that all things
are one. There is no discord, but rather concord lives. All is in wisdom,
nothing jars. There is nothing contrived or twisted about His word since there
is nothing thus in Him !(Cf.
Proverbs 8:8, which so affirms of His word, and Deuteronomy 32:4, of Him.)
Thus WHILE He chooses, and He alone, who are His (cf. II Timothy 2:19 with I
Peter 1:24-25, Matthew 5:17ff.), there is equally a necessity not to make your
own commandments. Those who are His, being regenerated, they are corrected from
any such vagrancy! (Hebrews 12). Even the quality of
their faith is adjusted and cleansed, in an image, like a carburettor
(cf. I Peter 1:7, II Corinthians 1:8-10), yes from the highest to the lowest
amongst the redeemed!

There is moreover a totally
harmonious aspect of His glory, that in love He is illimitable, for HE WOULD
HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED (I Timothy 2:4), a fact on which many have stumbled,
just as many more stumble on the obverse, that WHOM HE WILL HE HARDENS (Romans
9). Each is gloriously true. If HE HARDENS them, then is not truth first
despised (II Thessalonians 2:9ff.); and if it is
despised, is it not for Him to despise the despising and bring results to the
vagrant and vicious liberties, turned into the work of spiritual libertines,
among men!

Does He pretend we are not
in His image, or that we are our own gods! Not at all.
Neither is true, and long and hard, at times harsh has
been the discord from not seeing it all together. He requires and ACCEPTS NO
HELP in salvation (Ephesians 2) and He requires and promotes all co-operation
in sanctification (Philippians 2:12 with 3:20 which latter shows the assured
result of it all, as in Ephesians 1:11).

Now all these things, they
are gloriously together and in accord*2: His
holiness, purity, His reliability, His essential and illimitable love, His
intense and total refusal to be gulled, His monergism,
so that all the work both of creation and of salvation is HIS ALONE, His
tenderness where the heart is ready, His solicitude for the task, His fearless
assurance in promoting people like Moses and David to amazing tasks, without IN
THE LEAST glorifying them, for each had a failing or fault at one time or
another, and each was great only when small; or as Paul puts it, in reflecting
on the divine aid, as given (II Cor. 12:9-10):

" 'My grace is
sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.'

'Therefore most gladly I will
rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in
persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I
am strong."

Thus it
comes from, goes to God, and it is individual, secured and sure: indeed He has
SEALED against the day of judgment, those who are His
(Ephesians 1:13-14) and these are 'accepted in the beloved' (Eph. 1:6). It is simple, profound
and personal, and as with personal things, you need to START with the Person;
and only then do you understand His word and ways. In another sense, as a
preliminary to knowing Him, you follow His word TO Him (John 5:39-40), but when
you know Him, then His word interprets Him WHO IS THERE, like someone to whom
you are speaking while reading his letters!

What is He like ? His isthe beauty of holiness!

There
IS nothing like it.

THERE ARE SOME FEATURES IN THIS BEAUTYWHICH COMMAND
INSTANT ATTENTION

You find a statement
touching this in Philippians 2. It applies to all who are His, in a small,
derivative but qualitatively essential manner.

Let us first consider the
statement itself, and proceed to Phil. 2:6. There we find that there was about
the One who came as the Christ a status and state that made Him EQUAL WITH GOD.As His word, we see equally
that He was always with His Father, at the first, indeed as Isaiah 44:6 says
and Revelation 2:8 echoes of Christ, "I am the first and the last." In view of this, Christ as God can
be and was sent from God (Isaiah 48:16, I John 1:1-4, Micah 5:1-3). He is
His personal expression (Hebrews 1).

This signature, name and
unique prerogative of God Almighty is effortlessly attributed to the Lamb, as
is the essential word of Exodus 3:14 in John 8:58, and the name of God Himself
is His, as in Hebrews 1:6, where the topic is GOD WHO AT VARIOUS TIMES AND IN
VARIOUS WAYS spoke to the fathers, and is the subject of the sentence. A throne
is not God, but a place of power; but the throne of God Himself, as in Psalm
45, is attributed to the Lamb, and both there and in
Hebrews 1, the name also. The Son, we read, has this ineffable divine majesty
naturally ascribed to Him; and since the Bible, as we have been emphasising, knows only one God, the rest, the stuff
imperiously invented is mere emptiness and nothings, futilities without
utility. Occupying distinctively the place of "Brightness of His glory", His is the expressive place of the
eternal word of God (Hebrews 1, John 1).

This being so, Christ had, as we see in Phil. 2, the FORM of God. This means
that the external, or if you like, the expressive realities relating to the
actuality, something the WORD sums up, these were His. A man's form is not for
a beast, or an aircraft. It is specifically and specially and uniquely his by
definition. God's form is the same. Since He is infinite, it is infinitely surpassing
all else, and suited to the infinite alone; nothing else even is in this
category, and indeed it is not even a category in this, that it is but ONE!
(cf. Ephesians 4:5, Isaiah 45, where this is emphasised
both of the el
and the elohim names, at the supernatural level).

Christ vacated this FORM.
He has a purpose. It was to take the form of a man, indeed that of a servant
amongst men, so that His special service - that of being obedient, not only as
an example, not only in power to help and heal, but as a death-dealt victim, as
a sacrifice indeed, with and through and to the account of sin, not His own,
vicariously and victoriously - might proceed. It is rather like putting on a
white coat in a laboratory, or a lead shield amid atomic waste, but in this
case it is the reverse. He was willing to remove His shield and to be polluted
in all but Spirit, so that the pollutions of man, like those at Lake Baikal,
that magnificent but despoiled reservoir of fresh water, might be removed in
the very midst. It is as if something could go, fluid amidst fluid, and
chemically neutralise, or if
you insist, atomically engulf all the waste and flurry and make the water clean
again.

As man to men, from God as
God, Christ came.

He did not insist on
privilege. He make no declaration of His 'rights', that disgusting clamour which can verge so often in this world on the
ludicrous and the self-absorbed, though justice must remain. His was a meekness
which was willing to be slapped, have His very beard (Isaiah 50) ripped, His
face made a mockery of human flesh (Isaiah 52:12ff.), and His back to be beaten
to near deadly state, while yet they mocked, and yet they hung Him, nails His
support, into the domain of death, jibing the while, and taking games to
distribute His goods.

That is holiness and amidst
its intense ugliness of FORM is an intensive beauty of SPIRIT! He even prays
continuingly,
"Father, forgive, for they do not know what they are doing!" Many would shortly receive that
forgiveness, going where it is to be found (as in Isaiah 55, John 3:16).

But what does it teach to
us at the level of behaviour in terms of the beauty
of holiness ? First of course, it is the Lord's and
anything of it is found only in Him. Here consider verse 8 of Hosea Chapter 14.
This beautiful chapter concerns a garden, an allegorical garden, one which in
its NATURALNESS and its prodigality, its order and its fragrance of botanical
description and loving nurture, is one which GOD MADE.

Others may want to make
other Edens, despite the flaming sword to exclude;
but the only other Eden is the one which is to come, in heaven. Here on earth,
now, there is chastening and cleansing and pilgrimage. The end comes shortly.
While however the earth is to have a millenium of
some dimension, even there, revolt will come before the assizes sit (Revelation
20), showing the inveterate and intractable character of sin in situ
(cf. Isaiah 26:10).

Secondly, what do we find
in this revelation in Philippians 2 ?It shows that
self-affirmation is a sickly and weedy thing, and of course it is precisely this which is being
affirmed so much in the High Schools and in the psychic denudations which pass
as gardens, but merely make man naked of all loveliness, in the world's domain
at present. BE yourself, MAKE your own commandments, let them be TRUE TO
YOURSELF, be a SACRED SELF, and ensure that NO ONE TANGLES WITH YOU, and let
them have it who would correct you.

Indeed, what more is to be found ? Such things as this: Be a god (and this is not mere
mockery, for the folly is even now quite real, and is to come to consummation
in the antichrist as we have seen), and make your own morals, so that then, WHO
CAN CORRECT YOU. Yes be INCORRIGIBLE! and so they fall into the pit as if it
were a palace, and parade naked like the Emperor, too proud to admit he had
been duped, and that his wonderful 'new clothes' were but a myth, an invention,
and so his nakedness was greatly 'admired' by fawning courtiers, while he was
actually a deluded disgrace... nothing more.

Thirdly, it reminds us that
obedience is part of holiness. Now obedience to pope or dictator in their
ostentatious claims, this is folly; for when it comes to direction of one's
very spirit, that is God's prerogative of grace for the Christian, and should
be so owned for all; and in Him, is found man’s
source and owner (Romans 11:33, 14:9). To let mere man, in one or two or a
million and two, direct your life and its morals, your wisdom and its source,
your ideology and its nature, this is far worse than
madness. There are no spiritual asylums, but if there were, this would be
paramount. A MERE CREATION to direct someone in the image of God! (Cf. With
Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength Ch. 11,
*1, and Ancient Words : Modern DeedsCh. 9